You know what I want out of Dat/IFPS/whatever? A shared calendar (say, family-wide, or workgroup-wide) that doesn't need a centralized server. And accessible on my phone, even when offline. Is something like that possible?

Ok hi tech journalists, if some software/hardware organization/corporation releases a patch for Meltdown in their products, PLEASE don't report that as "a patch for meltdown and spectre" unless Spectre is ALSO patched. Thank you.

"Making #Facebook good for democracy is not entirely altruistic. It is, in many ways, also a smoke screen meant to obscure the fundamental reality that this service, like many social media products, depends for its very survival on its ability to exploit its users’ time and attention."

#AskMastodon Lovely techies! To get some practice facilitating workshops, I’m hosting a discussion this weekend on social media security. Are there any subjects I should cover, exercises I can present, questions I should ask, bad puns I can make? 📱💻📞

So here's the thing about Google's creepy smart home gadgets. None of this is really new. I made a smart home type of system over a decade ago, with more sophisticated features than are described here, such as elaborate computer vision indoor and out, and gesture control.

None of it required the data to be sent to anyone else's server, and definitely not to Google.

All of this type of data can be under the control of the user, without any surveillance being conducted by a megacorporation. Home automation can be quite useful, depending upon what your needs are, although I found that doing this type of thing wasn't especially useful to me so I abandoned it after a while.